Electrical connectors comprising an insulating body having electrical contacts carried thereby are well known in the art. In the so-called male pin connectors, the insulating body carries pin-like contacts which extend above and below the insulating body to facilitate electrical connection from one element, such as a printed circuit board (PCB), to another element, which may, for example, comprise a so-called female connector. As is well known, a female connector comprises an insulating body which carries an electrical contact which is generally capable of receiving at one end thereof a male pin, and at the other end thereof an electrical conductor which may be another male pin, a single electrical conductor, or a single strand of a multiconductor flat ribbon cable. Typically, the aforedescribed male connector and female connector are utilized in a tandem or coupled fashion to provide electrical connection from one element such as the printed circuit paths on a PCB to individual conductors or the multiple conductors of a multiconductor ribbon cable.
The aforedescribed male and female type connectors are generally manufactured with a predetermined number of contacts carried thereby. For example, a typical male connector of the type described above might comprise a length of insulating material having two, ten, twenty, thirty, or any number of pins carried thereby. Similarly, a female connector may comprise a body of insulating material having individual cavities disposed therein, each cavity of which carries an electrical contact. Like the male connectors, the female connectors are commonly manufactured with two, ten, twenty, thirty, etc., contacts.
There are drawbacks associated with the manufacture and use of both male and female connectors of the type described above. The end user may use several connectors, each having a different number of electrical contacts or "positions". He must therefore purchase and inventory many different connector sizes, i.e. he must maintain a supply of 8-position, 12-position, 20-position connectors, etc.
A continuous connector strip for solving this problem was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,387. U.S. Pat. No. 4,832,622 (the '622 patent), whose contents are herein incorporated by reference, describes a better solution to the problem involving continuous extrusion or semi-continuous injection molding. Problems with the continuous extrusion scheme are that only simple header configurations are possible, and the extruded strip must in a subsequent step have holes punched and notches formed. While the semi-continuous injection molding scheme avoids the foregoing problems, it also has drawbacks, which will be best understood from the description given in the copending application, Ser. No. 08/498,536, and involve, briefly put, maintaining the proper pitch for elements added to the molded strip, and the possibility of weak joints where the discrete segments are joined together causing the two discretely molded segments to separate during the interconnecting device insertion process, shipment or during the end user's assembly process.
The copending application, Ser. No. 08/498,536, shows one possible solution to the problem involving, in accordance with one aspect of that invention, providing each segment with a trailing projecting portion, substantially in-line with the strip, with undercuts or recessed regions behind the projecting portion. The projecting portion of each previously-molded segment is reinserted in the mold and the leading portion of the next segment molded over and around the projecting portion to provide a strong interlocking structure substantially in-line with the connector strip. In a preferred embodiment, the projecting portion has a hole for receiving an electrical or mechanical part, and the overmolded part also has a hole, with both holes aligned to receive the electrical or mechanical part. In this way, despite the fact that the resultant interlocking structure is in-line in the strip, a space for an electrical or mechanical part is not lost, so that for an application where, say, electrical pins are provided in evenly-spaced holes in the strip, a pin can also be placed in the aligned holes of the interlocking structure to maintain the symmetry.
The second copending application, Ser. No. 08/755,298, shows another possible solution to the problem involving, in accordance with one aspect of that invention, providing the electrical or mechanical parts to be added to the molded strip in the mold when the electrically-insulating parts are molded, with the result that the previously-molded segment including the projecting portion already incorporates the electrical or mechanical parts and thus in the next cycle the projecting portion need only be overmolded with electrically-insulating material to form a solid interlocking structure. This embodiment offers the advantage that it is not necessary as a separate step to insert the electrical or mechanical parts in the holes in the completed strip following the molding step.